Anne Gerritsen

Anna Grasskamp

Michael Yonan

"The term 'jar' refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar -- and this book shows that jars are part of human experience throughout time and space, regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as such containers, storage vessels and urns might be, Transformative Jars addresses a scholarly absence by bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars to offer non-archaeological perspectives. The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focus on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of jars with a variety of contents through time and throughout space in relation to the charging and re-charging of these objects with different sets of meanings. Detailed analysis of a broad range of objects shows jars to be transcultural containers that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and other-worldly realms. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users and collectors, this book presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption"--

Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures

Transformative Jars

Stacey Sloboda

While the connected, international character of today's art world is well known, the eighteenth century too had a global art world. Eighteenth-Century Art Worlds is the first book to attempt a map of the global art world of the eighteenth century. Fourteen essays from a distinguished group of scholars explore both cross-cultural connections and local specificities of art production and consumption in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The result is an account of a series of interconnected and asymmetrical art worlds that were well developed in the eighteenth century. Capturing the full material diversity of eighteenth-century art, this book considers painting and sculpture alongside far more numerous prints and decorative objects. Analyzing the role of place in the history of eighteenth-century art, it bridges the disciplines of art history and cultural geography, and draws attention away from any one place as a privileged art-historical site, while highlighting places such as Manila, Beijing, Mexico City, and London as significant points on globalized map of the eighteenth-century art world. Eighteenth-Century Art Worlds combines a broad global perspective on the history of art with careful attention to how global artistic concerns intersect with local ones, offering a framework for future studies in global art history.

Michael Yonan

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